


In the Blackout

by kindkit



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Canon Gay Character, Canon Gay Relationship, Community: kink_bingo, M/M, Scars, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-27
Updated: 2013-07-27
Packaged: 2017-12-21 11:56:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/900030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindkit/pseuds/kindkit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do scars matter?</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Blackout

**Author's Note:**

> Set after the end of _The Charioteer_. My Feelings About Ralph are showing. 
> 
> The line Laurie quotes comes from Siegfried Sassoon's [Does It Matter?](http://www.bartleby.com/136/14.html).
> 
> This was written as a fill for the Kink Bingo prompt "scars/scarification."
> 
> No standard Kink Bingo content notes apply.

The air raid sirens sounded a few minutes ago, but the only aeroplanes Laurie can hear are high up, faint and getting fainter. They're saving their bombs for London. 

A mental cramp of anxiety wrings him at the thought of Andrew in the East End. He feels it at every siren, every morning's newspaper account of the damage done, every post that might bear a letter telling him Andrew is dead. Familiarity has not bred ease. It reminds Laurie of Dunkirk, the fear as constant as waves, as constant as shelling, grinding away at the nerves. 

He kisses the top of Ralph's head, smelling the clean scent of his hair, and he feels Ralph take a deep breath that is mostly, probably, contentment. They don't talk about Andrew anymore. Ralph is too proud to bring it up, and Laurie finds himself tangled in two barbed truths: one would make Ralph feel second-best, and the other would slight Andrew's memory. Trying to tell both would sound dishonest. Ralph knows all that really matters: Laurie is here.

Laurie lets his fear swirl and settle in him, as he learnt in hospital to fight pain by not fighting it. Ralph notices a tension, though, or guesses his thoughts. It isn't, after all, very difficult. His hand, which has been lying at Laurie's collarbone, begins to rub soothingly along his chest. Laurie stretches, moving carefully in the darkness until he finds Ralph's mouth, and kisses him. "Ralph," he says. It's not the prelude to anything; it's complete in itself, a statement. 

Since Laurie's discharge from the hospital and the army they've had every night together unless Ralph is working. It hasn't cloyed; they spend the long November evenings in bed, making love and talking but above all touching, body curved around body. They are learning each other anew, from the outside in. Andrew is wrong (Laurie shocks himself with the thought) to believe that truth is what you feel when you're alone. Laurie has come to understand both Ralph and himself better in their shared bed than he ever did puzzling and fretting by himself. Of course, Andrew believes in God, and therefore doesn't believe true aloneness exists. Laurie does.

This naked communion in bed, this conjuring of the soul through the skin, is something Laurie could never have had with Andrew. Laurie knows it, and so does Ralph. Ralph hasn't been triumphant about it, nor ever hinted an I-told-you-so. It's his generosity, but it's something else too, an echo of a disaster averted that will come to Laurie in intermittent nightmares for the rest of his life.

Encouraged by a gentle push on the shoulder, Laurie lies flat. The all-clear sounds, startling him, and worry for Andrew means it's some time before he can relax under Ralph's touch. But Ralph is good at touching. There was a time when Laurie thought it was a skill, almost a trick. He's been unfair to Ralph so often. There may be some consciousness mixed with Ralph's instinct, but at its heart it's a way of bringing peace and easing pain--Ralph's pain as well. Laurie was a fool not to have understood sooner.

Laurie is almost drifting into sleep when he feels Ralph's hand glide down his right leg, brushing almost imperceptibly lightly along his ruined knee, tracing the twists of the flesh below it. Ralph has never touched him there before, not deliberately. "Don't."

"Sorry, Spud. I didn't mean to hurt you." There's a note of confusion in his voice; Ralph believes, and he's probably right, that if he'd hurt Laurie he'd have known it.

"You didn't." Laurie gropes for the hand that's now resting on his hip bone, and lays his own over it. "I - it's ugly, that's all."

"It's only a scar."

It still hurts most of the time, although not as badly as it did before the new boot. It will probably always hurt a little, and if he lives to be old, it will get worse. He will never run, or walk gracefully, or climb stairs quickly, or sit without sticking his leg out in front of him. And it can be awkward in bed. Ralph has been patient, but Laurie doesn't want Ralph to have to be patient. "'Does it matter, losing your leg?'"

"What?'

"It's from a poem. From the last war. I read it when I was at Oxford."

"Oh." Ralph has started stroking him again, gentling him.

"Never mind, it was a self-pitying thing to say. I know I ought to remember the men who have lost their legs, and feel lucky. Or the men who are dead."

"I've never liked that as a consolatory tactic, myself." A few weeks ago, Laurie wouldn't have believed that Ralph had ever wanted consolation. Ralph might not have admitted it then. "But for what it's worth, I spent months thinking you were dead. What that scar means to me is that you aren't. I like it rather a lot for that."

Has Ralph ever thought what Laurie has thought, that because of their wounds they're both safely out of the war? Laurie will never have to fear the news that Ralph's ship is sunk without survivors. There's still the bombing, of course, but a bomb might take them both together.

Laurie reaches between their bodies for Ralph's left hand and enfolds it in his own. Ralph's other, unwounded hand is bigger than Laurie's, but the missing fingers and narrowed palm of this one make it almost disappear in Laurie's grasp. "If we're comparing ugliness," Ralph says, "I've got a strong contender there."

"It doesn't matter to me."

Ralph's forefinger and thumb squeeze Laurie's palm gently. "I think it does sometimes, Spuddy." 

He should have known better than to hope Ralph hadn't noticed. "It's . . . I used to have nightmares, sometimes, after surgery on my leg. While I was coming round from the anaesthetic. Twice I dreamt that someone had taken my real leg away and hidden it and sewn a corpse's leg onto me instead." He lifts Ralph's hand to his cheek and presses it there. "There are moments when I can't think of this hand as _yours_. I do mean moments, instants, but it seems . . . alien. And then the moment passes and it's only a scar. Your scar." Laurie moves his head, rubbing against Ralph's fingers. The truncated middle one feels different from the others, blunt and thick.

"Bunny hated it," Ralph says. "Though he would never admit it. There were times when I hated him for not having any scars at all."

"That's one problem you won't have with me."

"One of many! The knee's the least of your differences from Bunny." But Bunny's name, like a jinx, brings sorrow in its wake. Laurie can feel Ralph remembering everything that led up to three sealed letters and a discarded rag stained with gun oil.

He takes both of Ralph's hands and guides them to his right thigh, just above the scar. "Go on. It's all right."

"Sure?"

"Yes." 

Ralph cups his knee, warm and comforting. "Tell me if I hurt you." He begins to explore again with his fingertips.

"All right," Laurie says, accepting the strange play of sensations. Some spots are oversensitive, some numb with scar tissue. "But you won't." 

After a while Laurie notices that Ralph isn't using his left hand, so he holds it. He's been a little afraid to touch it, as Ralph has been afraid to touch his knee. He runs his fingers all over it, brings it to his mouth to kiss it, and he hears Ralph sigh. "Is that all right?"

"Yes. Yes, go on, Spuddy." Laurie kisses it again, kisses _Ralph_ , loving the scar for the sake of the man. He smiles against Ralph's palm, and hopes that Ralph can feel it.


End file.
